I recently knocked out a small piece of the right front wall of the house to install a new postbox.
French postmen don’t get off their electric bikes so need somewhere accessible to drive up to and deliver.
There’s even a set of standard heights and positions. Quite anal really.
He told me where he’d like it so I started knocking out the stones.
They proved pretty difficult but eventually I had a nice sized hole to put the box in, and enough smaller stones to close up around the outside afterwards
Whilst digging into the wall, I hit a hollow area with some earthy deposits in – nothing unusual, it’s normally just the infill between the inner and outer wall.
However, out of this builders infill I picked out some old pottery. Just a single piece.

Pottery found in a wall 2016, The Pilgrims House, St Frichoux, France

It’s unglazed, dark grey and quite rough, and where it’s broken there are a few small brilliant white pieces of some substance used to make the clay.

The piece is not light, it’s quite heavy and was obviously the top of a large storage jar of some kind. If I was to estimate the size of the rim, it must have been 15cms in diameter.
The bottom could be any shape, but I’d guess it was shallow  – something to cook in.

The shard is about 12 cms long

Close-up showing the clay makeup 

My previous post explains my thinking about why I think there was another house on this site before mine, and how the two houses may have combined.
This pottery piece was found near the wall corner that if I’m correct, is one of the old walls.

I want to try and find someone to date the piece. It must date (whatever the case) to either 1749-1769 when the new house was built there, or earlier.
If the shard is found to be older than that, and my theory is correct, then we will know that there was a house there before and approximately when it was built.

My immediate thought is that this is not a piece of 18th. century pottery. I think it might be medieval